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The CrowdsourcerZach Braff took some hard knocks for Kickstarting his second movie with money from supporters. He has several million reasons to pay those critics—and the studios that passed on his film—no mind.

If you want a sense of how roundly Hollywood's faltering blockbuster economy has been criticized, consider that even the ostensible creators of it, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, have blasted it. Add Zach Braff to the chorus: "Like Steven Soderbergh said, the movie business is broken." When the actor-director's efforts to get his second feature, Wish I Was Here, off the ground were stymied by the studios ("They had all kinds of rules that wouldn't have allowed me to make the film I wanted to make"), he joined the crowdsourcing revolution, putting his celebrity passion project in the hands of the citizen-patrons of Kickstarter. "I thought, 'The film is about my generation challenging the status quo—why shouldn't I do the same thing?'" Braff reached his goal of $2 million (from nearly 30,000 backers) in just three days and ultimately brought in a total of more than $3.1 million from 46,000-plus supporters while attracting loads of publicity and outrage. "Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the vitriol came from other filmmakers who are not yet successful, whose rationale was that somehow I was inhibiting their ability to get financing," Braff says. "Sure, I have my own money, but I can't finance a $5 million movie alone. And as Kickstarter finally came out and said, I brought an insane amount of people to the conversation who knew nothing about crowd-funding."

Zach Braff, 38Credit Check:Garden State; upcoming: Wish I Was HereThe Logical Next Step: "People making capital investments in my film and me recouping upside is what critics accused me of when I joined Kickstarter. It's actually an awesome idea, but it's also illegal. I wouldn't survive jail. Unlike Martha Stewart, I have no skills to offer my fellow prisoners."

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Lego Is Putting the Block in Blockbuster
Could the route to box-office gold be the Yellow (And red and green and . . . ) Brick Road? Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the directors of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, are betting big on interlocking blocks with The LEGO Movie, their animated action comedy voiced by the likes of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, and Channing Tatum. The cultural appetite is whetted. Beyond installations (a life-size X-wing fighter), museum shows, and art books, the first official doc on the toy phenomenon, Beyond the Brick: A LEGO Brickumentary, is set to arrive in theaters in early 2014. And don't forget the little yellow minions that helped make the Despicable Me films monster hits—they look suspiciously like LEGO men. Coincidence? Hollywood thinks not.

even if that is simply impossible, as in Scott Cooper's gritty revenge drama Out of the Furnace (out December 6)and he certainly never acts like one. It is perhaps telling that his Oscar is for Best Supporting Actor (Russell's The Fighter), not Best Actor. "It isn't about him, it's always about the character," Cooper says. "He goes against a large percentage of actors who want to be known for what they do offscreen, who want to be personalities." That disinterest in celebrity and dedication to keeping his personal life private allows for an uncommonly pure viewing experience. It's a blueprint you can see younger leading men like Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, and Tom Hardy following closely. And it's the reason notoriously picky directors like Russell, Christopher Nolan, Terrence Malick, and Todd Haynes keep circling back. Bale has three major films in progress for 2014, including Malick's Knight of Cups and Ridley Scott's Exodus. We spoke with the 39-year-old star as he was preparing to undertake a transformation of biblical proportion to play Moses.
The Leading Man Meet the emancipated Leonardo Dicaprio, a single-name superstar who's broken free of the shackles that constrain other A-listers: Don't accept a supporting role? (Too late.) Never mess with a beloved classic? (Whoops.) Under no circumstances play a bad guy? (Does a virulently racist slave owner count?)
"I apologize if my voice is outI've been screaming all day," Leonardo DiCaprio says from the Long Island set of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. Taking a respite in his production office, he sounds sleepy, scratchy, and, quite frankly on this late-October afternoon, a little spent.
Gone are the days of the biennial, or at best annual, Leo movie. After assiduously turning selectivity into an art form, long exercising the power of saying no, he is tasting the freewheeling joyand painof saying yes: DiCaprio has three big films hitting theaters within the next year, and he's producing three to boot. He's coming off a year straight of wrangling, meetings, and a whole lot of acting. "This has been an exceptional situation," DiCaprio says. "Filming three movies back to back to back, I don't think I've ever done that."
Curiously, he gravitated toward a timely theme in all of them. "In a weird way," he says, "I realize these movies are about three different periods in American history, but all have a central character trying to hold on to the privileged life they've been given, by any means necessary." He says this either unaware or unconcerned that it could apply to a 38-year-old movie star who is taking risks like never before.
For the first time since appearing in Woody Allen's Celebrity in 1998, he's playing a supporting rolea villain, no lessin Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti Westerncumrevisionist slave narrative Django Unchained; he's reinterpreting the most iconic character in modern American literature in Baz Luhrmann's high-octane 3-D adaptation of The Great Gatsby; and then he's reportedly going the full monty in a group-sex scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, the no-holds-barred look at the finance world he'd been trying to get made as a producer for years. With so much conduct unbecoming a leading man, it's a wonder Damon, Cruise, et al., haven't staged an intervention. You can almost hear them: "Leo, baby, why don't you find yourself a nice action franchise and settle down?"
That's the thing about the Tao of Leo: He's managed to cast a long shadow over Hollywood for two full decades without ever bowing to conventionno big-budget franchises, no rom-coms, not even a true action movie. "I don't know why I choose certain films," he says. "I just gravitate toward them and I don't question that."
Perhaps the boldest move in DiCaprio's 20-year career is playing antebellum plantation owner Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. DiCaprio was drawn to him from the moment he read Tarantino's script. He calls Calvin "one of, if not the most, despicable, indulgent, radical characters I've ever read in my life." Naturally, DiCaprio signed on right away, and he promptly presented Tarantino with a gift: an antiquarian book on phrenology, the racist pseudo-science used to rationalize slavery. From there, DiCaprio and Tarantino made some striking modifications. "Writer-directors tend to be very precious about their material and their words," he says, "but Quentin's whole process is getting input from the actors and adding levels to their characters." Perhaps no character evolved as much as Calvin, the master of Candyland plantation. "A lot of the talks we had specifically about phrenology really took him to a completely different level." "I apologize if my voice is outI've been screaming all day," Leonardo DiCaprio says from the Long Island set of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. Taking a respite in his production office, he sounds sleepy, scratchy, and, quite frankly on this late-October afternoon, a little spent. DETAILS: So, are we talking action-figure-ready Moses? Christian Bale: I certainly wouldn't want to call it an action film, though he fought a number of battles throughout his life. Let me put it this way: Any of us living today who arrived back then would be scared shitless. The Transformer After redefining the superhero genre as Batman, Christian Bale is back to doing what he loves best: disappearing into messy, larger-than-life charactersleading-man looks be damnedfor fiercely independent filmmakers.
Gone are the days of the biennial, or at best annual, Leo movie. After assiduously turning selectivity into an art form, long exercising the power of saying no, he is tasting the freewheeling joyand painof saying yes: DiCaprio has three big films hitting theaters within the next year, and he's producing three to boot. He's coming off a year straight of wrangling, meetings, and a whole lot of acting. "This has been an exceptional situation," DiCaprio says. "Filming three movies back to back to back, I don't think I've ever done that."
Curiously, he gravitated toward a timely theme in all of them. "In a weird way," he says, "I realize these movies are about three different periods in American history, but all have a central character trying to hold on to the privileged life they've been given, by any means necessary." He says this either unaware or unconcerned that it could apply to a 38-year-old movie star who is taking risks like never before. Adding philosophical underpinnings to Calvin's racism helped unlock the character, informing his affection for his surrogate father, a house slave played by Samuel L. Jackson, and his leering need to possessas chattelDjango's wife, played by Kerry Washington. Tarantino drew on phrenology to fashion an epic, incendiary monologue on racial superiority. The moment DiCaprio finished delivering the speech, the entire cast gave him a spontaneous standing ovation. The Leading Man
Meet the emancipated Leonardo Dicaprio, a single-name superstar who's broken free of the shackles that constrain other A-listers: Don't accept a supporting role? (Too late.) Never mess with a beloved classic? (Whoops.) Under no circumstances play a bad guy? (Does a virulently racist slave o Adding philosophical underpinnings to Calvin's racism helped unlock the character, informing his affection for his surrogate father, a house slave played by Samuel L. Jackson, and his leering need to possessas chattelDjango's wife, played by Kerry Washington. Tarantino drew on phrenology to fashion an epic, incendiary monologue on racial superiority. The moment DiCaprio finished delivering the speech, the entire cast gave him a spontaneous standing ovation. The Leading Man Meet the emancipated Leonardo Dicaprio, a single-name superstar who's broken free of the shackles that constrain other A-listers: Don't accept a supporting role? (Too late.) Never mess with a beloved classic? (Whoops.) Under no circumstances play a bad guy? (Does a virulently racist slave oDETAILS: Do you pay attention to the business of Hollywood?
Christian Bale: I'm a fucking awful businessman. I got no idea how to sell a film. I don't know why people want to see certain films. But it's a strange brew, you know, because I don't feel like an artist or anythingthere's way too much business involved in this whole thing for that. But equally there's way too much creativity for this to be like any normal business. DETAILS: Did you hear about the Internet reaction to Ben Affleck being cast as Batman? It was surprisingly virulent.
Christian Bale: Somebody pointed it out to me. Look, there's no middle ground on the Internet. It's just extreme feelings. They love you or abhor you. Ben knows that, and I doubt if he spent one minute worrying about it. DETAILS: What's your take on Moses, one of the most iconic menand beardsin history?
Christian Bale: I prefer to call him Moshe. Otherwise it's like "Moooooses," and everyone immediately thinks of Chuck Heston. Ridley and myself, we'd like to present a different interpretation. I'd never sat down and read the five books of the Torahthe Pentateuchand there is some shocking stuff. Things you certainly never hear in Sunday school. He's a fascinating guy, with all of the vulnerabilities and extraordinary capacities that come with being very humanalmost too human, and quite harsh in his emotions. It's a raw story when you break it down. DETAILS: So, are we talking action-figure-ready Moses?
Christian Bale: I certainly wouldn't want to call it an action film, though he fought a number of battles throughout his life. Let me put it this way: Any of us living today who arrived back then would be scared shitless.-->